Manufacturing and electrical engineering equipment, that I was just given access too!

M3 Post community,

I was just given access through my school, Carnegie Mellon University, the Silicon Valley campus to some great equipment. It includes a plastic 3D printer, 2D laser cutter, milling machine, and a ton of other equipment for creating circuit boards and testing RF & electromagnetic signals. I am posting the pictures below of what our shop looks like.

Although I have no training, I do at least have the facilities and permissions to use equipment if I want to. I will receive some basic training but if anyone can think of a use for this very high tech equipment, we should build something!!

The faculty encourages building things even if it is not school related. The 3D printer uses standard srf files to make prototypes, so it would be cool if a designer came out of the M3post woodwork! And if we made something that worked we could send it off to manufacturing, through the school! Here is the equipment:

You could try to use the CNC Mill to create sections of a tool for brake ducts and then join them (because the mill doesn't look big enough to make a tool in one piece). You'd have to do some bondo work on the joints to make a good tool.

Then you could layup fiberglass over the tool. As long as it's a room temperature cure material you could even use delrin or similar materials for your tooling. Again, it wouldn't be rapid, but it would be pretty darn cheap.

I think for 3D printing you can make the designs, print the prototypes, test fit them, adjust the design, retest, and then send off to manufacturing, using the same 3D srf file. We already have a place for production and they even do small batches.